Reason for closing was because the topic was called, “How was your GO Fest 2020?”. I have now removed the ‘2020’ and thus it can be opened.
16 Shinies in all, but many of them were repeats. Not complaining though.
2 shinies… 
My detailed report is coming tomorrow.
I’m still very angry… a friend has asked me to help him, because he was on voyage, and at the end I have made 0 raids with my account… 
Caught 2 shines & was invited to a bunch of raids so all in all I’m very happy with Go Fest … only need one more raid to finish my research 
I live in a rural area so I’m happy !
Saturday:
Extremely hot 
for us in the UK - who are more used to rainy weather.
Didn’t get my first shiny until 3 and a half hours into the event! But then did very well.
24 shinies in all. Personal highlights were Snorlax, Deino and Swoobat.
Missed out on Audino, Throh, Sawk, Whismur and Tympole… but hey-ho… leaves me with something to chase later…
Sunday:
Heatwave continued… 
Had trouble finding raids of the shiny legends I wanted… kept getting the non-shinable genies 
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Then took 2 hours(!) to get served and eat a sandwich with chips in an outdoor cafe 
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Finally had to dash around doing any raid available to finish the research and get the free remote raid passes.
Get Moltres shinally! and bagged an unown F on the Gotcha. 7 shinies for the day, but nothing decent IV-wise on the legendaries I caught.
Postscript Gotcha Evolve konked out when I got home. Might’ve been the heat, or my constant tapping to get the darn thing to connect… 
I have so much to write about GO Fest, but I didn’t have time to do that today, so it’s coming tomorrow, hopefully.
I could write a whole book about GO Fest, but I’ll spare some time.
DAY 1
Just like last year, I played in my town on my bike. The weather was cloudy with the possibility of rain, but I was lucky that it rained only once when I was at home on a lunch break. After that, there was no rain so I could play freely. I prepared myself well for this GO Fest, I had enough Poke, Great and Ultra balls, enough Pokemon and bag storage and some incubators. I used incense all the time and put a lure module on one Poke stop, but I used only one starpiece during the bonus stardust window. I didn’t use any lucky eggs. I mega evolved my Charizard for the first time to Mega Charizard X and had it as my buddy. I used it in many raids and battles and I got bonus candies for every dragon-type Pokemon that I caught. I did some raids (Mewtwo, Deino, Galarian Ponyta/Zigzagoon/Weezing). I chose the Pop Star Pikachu, because I like pop music and I think that this Pikachu looks very cute. 
For the band, I chose Gardevoir and Galarian Ponyta. I listened to in-game music for a few minutes just to hear it and then I turned it off to save battery and it was hard to hear it with all the noise from the street. I completed all the collection challenges. The spawns were good, but the shiny rate was terrible. I got my first shiny from incense during the first hour and then nothing in the next 3 hours! 
I thought Niantic must have messed up the shiny rates, because they said it would be easier to get shinies on the first day and I got only 1 shiny while on the Community Day I would get more than 5 shinies during the same window. After some time I got 3 more shinies and then something amazing happened. In the last hour of Day 1 I found 7 shinies and 3 were back-to-back! 
As if Niantic did something to make the shiny rate better. I wish it had been like that from the beginning. In the end, I got 11 shinies on Day 1. Better than last year, but still not great. But, on the positive side, I got 4 new shinies that I didn’t have: Kricketot, Tangela, Chimecho (2 of them!) and Whismur (with great IVs!). Shinies that I already had were: Swablu, Absol, Gible, Sableye and Zubat. I got 2 new Pokedex entries: Throh and Meloetta (I already had Chatot) and 1 new Mega Pokedex entry: Mega Charizard X. But then there was one unexpected new Pokedex entry: Heracross!
I met with a local player who wanted to trade with me, so I gave him a Pokemon he didn’t have and I got Heracross from him and it turned out to be lucky with great IVs! 
So I finally completed my Johto Pokedex!Day 1 was great, I enjoyed it very much. I got 305,745 XP, caught 429 Pokemon (47 dragon-type), hatched 15 eggs, did 5 raids. This year, GO Fest was less buggy, it was more enjoyable to play, the habitats, global challenge arena and the rewards were great. What I didn’t like was low shiny rate, some Pokemon were very hard to catch like they were legendary (I’m looking at you, Meloetta hat Pikachu!) and we should have got more Pop Star Pikachu (I only got 3). All in all, I think this GO Fest was worth buying the ticket and I look forward to it next year.
As mentioned in another post leading up to Go Fest I had something come up at the start of the week that changed my plans for weekend time.
Day 1.
Didn’t play. Did some Poke Genie Raids after GoFest hours.
Day 2. Got 2 1/2 hrs of the last 3hrs to open the game. Stuck at home I used an incense for that time to catch what ever I could. 90min before the end I only needed Ekans and Cacnea to complete all 4 catch challenges.
Sadly I could not get either to spawn in the last 90min so fell short of completing all 4 catch challenges. Felt quite annoyed by that.
1 Shiny was also pathetic considering the hype of greatly increased chances. Reading a lot of people who played most of the hours are very upset re: lack of Shiny’s.
DAY 2
Before Day 2 began, I made a list of all the Pokemon that I want to raid. I had all the legendary Pokemon in my Pokedex except Reshiram, so it was my top priority. I also wanted to get more of the meta relevant Pokemon and to get some shinies that I didn’t have and Pokemon with better IVs than the ones I had. I knew I will need help from local players to get things done faster, so I arranged with them to meet me at 10 am to do the raids together. Only 1 player showed up on time and we had to wait an hour for other players to come. But we didn’t waste time and we did a couple of raids with the help of remote players. I finally got Reshiram! Now I wanted to check other legendaries off my list. The players finally came, but the next problem was the lack of Pokemon we wanted to raid in gyms around us. We could see 12 gyms from the place we were at and it happened that the Pokemon we wanted were in the farthest gyms, or that all the gyms had only Pokemon we were not interested in. So, I had to rely more on remote raids and the players from Discord. I was getting so many invitations and I invited people, too. It was sometimes overwhelming and chaotic, especially when I had to add new people to my friends list and to remember who are the first 5 players to respond to my invitation on Discord. Also there was lag when searching names. Some Pokemon were almost impossible to get invited to, and one of them was Zekrom. I just couldn’t find it in raids in my town and people didn’t invite me to it when I was looking. Unfortunately, Niantic still didn’t resolve that issue with raid invites and you can easily miss them when doing something in the game outside of the map screen. The final hour of the event came and I still didn’t raid any Zekrom. When I almost lost hope, 2 Zekrom raids appeared in the faraway gyms. But then, all of a sudden, it began raining heavily. I found cover with other players and we decided to catch them remotely. And we finally did it! 
When GO Fest ended in my time zone, I went home and did 2 more remote raids for the Pokemon that I didn’t get to raid. In the end, I did 20 raids. I was lucky because I caught every single Pokemon from raids. And the legendaries were easier to catch than usually. I caught some of them on the first throw or the first 5 throws.
Day 2 was very different from Day 1 because the focus was more on raids. I caught only 147 Pokemon and I used incense less, because I didn’t have time to catch wild Pokemon. I mostly did shiny checking. I got only 1 shiny on Day 2. It was Alomomola which I didn’t have. But, unfortunately, not a single shiny legendary. The shiny rate was too low on Day 2, Niantic shouldn’t have decreased it. I also didn’t get any hundos and majority of the legendaries I caught had mediocre IVs. 11 of them had 2 stars and out of the 9 with 3 stars only 1 Pokemon had one of the stats maxed out at 15! 
Other players around me got 98%, 96% IVs. But, on the positive side, I was happy to do so many legendary raids and to do them with other people, I got 482,275 XP on Day 2, hatched 5 eggs, got other Pokemon with good IVs and 1 new shiny, caught 37 dragon-type Pokemon and got bonus candies because I mega evolved Charizard X again. I also finished all the challenges and the special research.
Things that I liked: every legendary Pokemon in raids, finally got Reshiram, special research, rewards, bonuses from Day 1 still active, free event bundle with 3 remote raid passes, legendaries were easier to catch (for me).
Things that I didn’t like: not enough diversity of legendaries in gyms (5 Kyurem and you want a Palkia), hard to find better legendaries, very low shiny rate, bad IVs on legendaries that I got, I couldn’t do all the raids that I wanted, inviting people to raids remotely needs a rework.
My results in total (Day 1 and Day 2): 788,020 XP, around 500,000 stardust (don’t know exactly because I did some special trades and power-ups), I caught 576 Pokemon (84 dragon-type), got 12 shinies, hatched 20 eggs, did 6 normal raids and 21 legendary raids and I got 17 raid expert achievement screens!
I liked this year’s GO Fest, it was better than last year’s in some respects. Day 1 was better for me than Day 2. I hope next year GO Fest will be even better.
Forgot to discuss Day 2 for me. I teamed up with the Denver Downtown Raiders and we basically camped out at two clusters of gyms and just waited for the raids to come to us. There was always enough people to raid.
I had five more Shinies for the day (three from Raids, two from the Wild), and even caught a 98% Giratina. I did about 50+ Raids. I honestly lost count.
Almost forgot to share my GO Fest results. Well, better late than never I guess.
Day 1 was pretty solid for me. I prepared well, and brought some food, water and a charger with me. That was very needed, as I walked around for the entire eight hours. The game barely lagged, unlike GO Fest 2020. Pretty much the only problem was the weather, as it was suddenly extremely sunny. Most of the time I couldn’t even see what I was doing and I had to stop a lot to drink. And, after having walked around in the hot sun for eight and a half hours, I even encountered myself in Shiny. That was a cool surprise, because I didn’t know Niantic was going to add that. But it did hurt a little bit.
Day 2 was great as well, but far not as good as day 1. I actually couldn’t keep up playing the entire eight hours. After seven I got bored and stopped. But I did over 20 Legendary Raids, and captured a few Legendary Shinies I didn’t have. The bad weather continued, unfortunately, but since I was Raiding a lot I mostly sat in shadowed places. The low Shiny rate is what made day 2 a bit boring. But somehow I did manage to get 4 Shinies in 4 minutes and also actually back to back Shinies on day 2. (Four in four minutes were Skarmory, Marill, Woobat, Skorupi, the back to back Shinies were Feebas and Beldum.) But also hours without anything. I started the day with the Shiny Ferroseed, which was one I really wanted to get.
I managed to get the following Pokémon added to the Pokédex, because of GO Fest:
Throh, Chatot, Hydreigon (finally had a Deino worth evolving), Meloetta, and Galarian Weezing, although that did not count as a new Pokédex register. But it was a new one for me. And the same goes for Unown F.
I did not get a Hundo, unfortunately.
I got a total of 83 Shinies, which should have been 84, but I lost a Meloetta Hat Pikachu due to an Egg hatching during the encounter, which kicked me from the encounter, and it was an Incense spawn, so it was gone when the animation had finished.
Anyways, I got the following Shiny Pokémon:
Edit: The Larvitar has been evolved into Pupitar. I was lucky enough to get a very strong 3* Larvitar, and it will be evolved into a Tyranitar once I have the Shiny family complete.
Missed out on the following Shinies:
- Alolan Geodude
- Unown F
- Unown G
- Clamperl
- Scyther
- Hippopotas
- Sawk
- Gligar
- Chimecho
- Galarian Zigzagoon
- Galarian Ponyta
- Throh
- Lotad
- Croagunk
- Zubat
- Trapinch
I managed to get the following Shiny Pokemon:
- 2 Shiny Jigglypuff
- 3 Shiny Meloetta Hat Pikachu (one is not pictured in the image, because it is still in the Field Research Encounter Stack), a 4th one despawned unfortunately.
- 1 Shiny Kyogre
- 2 Shiny Deino
- 3 Shiny Dratini
- 1 Shiny Beldum
- 1 Shiny Roggenrola
- 5 Shiny Feebas
- 4 Shiny Audino
- 1 Shiny Ekans
- 1 Shiny Tympole
- 4 Shiny Skorupi
- 3 Shiny Aron
- 1 Shiny Snorlax
- 1 Shiny Absol
- 2 Shiny Tangela
- 2 Shiny Woobat
- 1 Shiny Regigigas (thanks to @Luke for the invite)
- 3 Shiny Slakoth
- 2 Shiny Whismur
- 1 Shiny Larvitar
- 2 Shiny Alolan Exeggutor
- 2 Shiny Carvanha
- 2 Shiny Sableye
- 1 Shiny Ferroseed
- 3 Shiny Chimchar
- 4 Shiny Gible
- 2 Shiny Kricketot
- 2 Shiny Aipom
- 3 Shiny Chinchou
- 3 Shiny Snivy
- 3 Shiny Marill
- 1 Shiny Skarmory
- 2 Shiny Ralts
- 1 Shiny Magikarp
- 1 Shiny Gyarados
- 2 Shiny Growlithe
- 1 Shiny Swablu
- 2 Shiny Jigglypuff
- 1 Shiny Larvitar
- 3 Shiny Wailmer
Added the following Pokemon to the Shiny Dex:
Deino, Hydreigon, Pupitar, Sableye, Snorlax, Regigigas, Ferroseed, Arbok, Kyogre, Absol, Tympole, Audino, Meloetta Hat Pikachu, Whismur, Loudred, Sharpedo, Gigalith
All in all, it was an awesome event!
A few shinies; a bunch of raids; pretty nice Go Fest.
Congrats to those whose event surpassed possibilities.
Having the one Rocker Pikachu (encountered as research reward) flee after breaking out of just the first throw was mildly upsetting. Yeah, mildly…
